Dust (49 page)

When he can stop laughing, Ali Dida Hada says, “You’ll have to find me first.”

“Relatives like me have a natural radar for our targets.” Petrus puts out his hand for Ali Dida Hada to shake.

Ali Dida Hada grasps it hard.

He hesitates, then asks, “There was a fire at the mission?”

“Yes,” replies Petrus.

“Casualties?”

“A few.”

Ali Dida Hada looks away. “Anyone we know?”

“Yes.”

“Survivors?”

Petrus blinks.

“Yes?”

“A
bambaloona
”—Petrus pauses—“might have managed to fly away.”

“I see.” A smile.

Later.

Around a now-roaring fire that had sustained a very long wake, four men—Nyipir, Ali Dida Hada, Petrus, Galgalu—and a woman, Akai Lokorijom, murmur in soft, soft tones. At moments what is being said has the cadence of incantations, at times sharp sounds erupt.

Slap!
Akai’s hand, Petrus’s face—she now understands who he is.

Then silence.

Murmurs.

A high groan breaks into that night.

Nyipir.

Letting go.

Then stillness.

The intermittent chirping of crickets, muted monotones, like the dirge of sad heralds. An undercurrent of haunted silences, but now also relief.

Ajany, lying on her back, listens to the whisperings. She turns to stare at the black spaces between stars that become Kormamaddo. His nose points south, in the vicinity of her heart. She tastes the tear-flavored names of just-found siblings:
Ewoi. Etir
. Quieter tears for Odidi, fragile parents, and even Hugh Bolton. This is also the night when she has lost her home. It will return to its true heir. Throbbing in Ajany’s head.

Homelessness is where Far Away is.

Small rocks hard against her back, the earth holding her weight. She turns, presses into the dust as if to dissolve into landscape.

I swear
, she remembers.

Soil, fear, threat—what children they had been.

Ajany rubs her face in the soil, kneads it in desire, its aches and promises.
What endures?
Spaces in the heart that accommodate the absent. She turns over, crosses her hands across her chest, feels the stir of arcane currents of ceaseless, restless love. Kormamaddo twinkling down at illusions.
What endures?
The hard earth: her limits.

In a corner of the ranch, a changing man gathers words from around a fire. He will try to make sense of these and fill his memories with what he learns. He finds himself wandering off to the boundaries of Wuoth Ogik, looking out, looking in, trying to decide where he ought to go next, how and why. He knows it won’t be England. Not yet.

Later.

From other spaces, a clear voice rings out: “Arabel Ajany!”

Ajany hugs the feeling of her name inside her mother’s voice.

“Arabel Ajany!”

She lingers so she can memorize the shape her name takes in Akai-ma’s mouth.

Soon.

Unsweetened porridge in a calabash. Akai-ma pours a portion out to her daughter and says, “Words are so small. They cannot show the womb of my heart.” She says, “It’s where I hold you.” She says, “My child.”

Ajany’s head goes up.

Gaze-touch.

Akai-ma strokes Ajany’s head, her face. “I leave now, Arabel, I must leave Wuoth Ogik.”

Ajany lowers her bowl, fingers twitching. “Why?”

“Weariness has gobbled up even the words that should bridge.”

Silence. A pause. Ajany is learning to look unflinching into the abyss.
This is also being
.

“We reached the end of our strength.” Akai’s hand supports her head. “So we turned into mutes.”

Another beginning
.

Night hues, ardent cravings, stomach rumble. Ajany wanting to tumble into her mother’s arms and give herself the respite of temporary childlike hopes, of simple homecoming.

Ebbing of life, as normal as the tides.

“What remains?”

“Stories? When we meet again.”

Quiet.

Ajany murmurs, “How will I find you now?”

Silence.

They sip porridge.

Akai-ma says, “Little to take from that house.”

Wuoth Ogik in deformed shadow.

Ajany’s sudden desperate tone: “Akai-ma, how does madness come? Can it arrive with the sound of wailing? It’s inside.” She stops. “It cries. Like a baby.”

With a rapid movement Akai-ma gathers Ajany to her and presses her head to her daughter’s. Lips to skin. Husky-voiced. “Tell the crying one that she has a mother. She belongs to life. She has a mother and the mother holds her. The mother forever holds her.”

A burning sensation harrows Ajany’s inner being.

It listens to Akai-ma say, “This is my heart, this is my breathing, and it’s you. You hear?” Heartbeats. Arms tighten around each other. Time darts through them. Small contentment.

Later.

Too soon.

Ajany watches her mother’s silhouette merge with the vast darkness in a slow-flow dance. On a distant hill, a pinprick of firelight. It wavers. She watches until time—or something like time—becomes seeing. After that, there is more waiting.

Under the waning moon, a shadow emerges. It approaches. It becomes Isaiah. He drops down next to Ajany. Above them, night-blackened clouds with starlit fringes. Isaiah shifts until their bodies touch. Ajany tilts her head, in the silver light. Mussed-up hair, frayed shirt collar, wiry
arm muscles, deepened angular features, a deep gaze fixed on her. The silence. With hardening nipples and aching body, she watches light slivers dance on his skin. Her silence, their stillness.

Then.

“Hello, Arabel?” Quiet in his voice.

“Hello, Isaiah.”

Isaiah reaches over. His hand on the back of her neck, he drags her to him. Rubbing his face against hers. Breathing her.

His house, she thinks.
His
Wuoth Ogik.

Bitterness.

It passes.

Echoes.

Fragrant aftertaste, this burnt-earth flavor of home.

It is this.

But it is not hers.

Not anymore.

Where will I go now?
A fleeting thought.

Her head against his, readying for more absences.

“Here.” He pulls out a folded square of paper from his shirt pocket. He explains, “Wuoth Ogik’s title deed. Your father gave it to me.”

She takes the document. Hands trembling, heart spinning. Will
you learn the faces of our stones or the passageway of old footsteps and repeat the prayers of our earth-covered dead?
She squints at the page, deciphering the words
Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Hugh Aubrey Francis Bolton
.

Memory: a lonely, broken face inside a dark Kalacha cave.

Relinquishment.

She will
not
grieve.

Small voice. “May I still visit Odidi here?” Small tears.

Isaiah’s fingers touch her face, drawing lines with her tears. “Maybe.” His head resting on hers. “What can a person do with falling stones?”

The watery mumbles of a distant spring, the sheltering gaze of sky. Silence as presence. Listening, she offers, “B-build?”

“Takes time,” he answers.

Myriad stars.

He says, “But
we
have time.”

Stillness.

She finally hears Isaiah.

“We?”

“Mhh.”

Silence.

Then, “Why?” Soft break in her voice.

“We’re here now.”

“Murderers?”

“Impostors.”

“Who?”

“Me. If I remember, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Amnesia?”

“Exorcism.”

“Atonement.”

“Sounds right.”

Night crickets, cicadas, cooling earth. Another breach. Life pushing at thresholds, encircling two beings. In a shared gaze, denuded presence. Accepting all as it is, even the haunted streaks, Ajany cups Isaiah’s face with both her hands. She traces its shape, its uneven edges, skin—warmth, texture. Stubble. When he clasps her to his body, her arms wrap around him. After that, everything he whispers into her ear and mouth and skin she sees in the glow of fireflies, hears in the call of night birds, the yowling of four winds, and the secret silent songs of stars that are not as distant as they first appear to be.

Later.

“Arabel,” Isaiah murmurs, “where’s Bernardo now?”

She recoils. A tiny shard of that strangeness is still lodged somewhere inside her. But it is working its way out. She gives Isaiah a limpid look, and her hands seek his, and his fit around hers.

Doum palms creak.

She says, “Ghosts lurk.”

“We’ll watch them together,” he says.

“Wildlife?”

“Old friends.”

Ajany’s laugh is throaty.

Isaiah chuckles with her. He says, “Nothing left to run away from now. No shadows.”

Her fingers stroke Isaiah’s skin. “How did you find me?” she asks.

“Your mother.” Ajany bucks. Isaiah’s arms tighten around her. “She says I’m to
enfold
you. Like this.” He squeezes Ajany to himself.

Breath squashed, she gasps, “What?”

“Or she’d
dethrone
me.”

“Dethrone?”

“From the hand gesture she made, I believe it means ‘to castrate.’ ”

Tears flood Ajany’s eyes.

“I’ll kiss you now,” Isaiah tells her.

Ajany waits.

“Dethrone,”
murmurs Isaiah.

Giggles color the darkness. It pours into so many emptinesses.

45

WAVE OF DEPARTURES. NYIPIR SLIPS ON HIS OLD FEDORA
, adjusts a frayed military jacket over a pale-brown shirt. A large green rucksack lies on the floor, stuffed with basics: knife, a snub-nosed pistol, rope, water bottle, a tattered black Bible, lighters, packs of newspaper-wrapped dried meat, three different passports, four identity cards, two credit cards, Maasai blankets, a rolled-up reed map, green coffee beans. From the depths of an old suitcase, Nyipir plucks out and unwraps the mouth organ.

He lifts it to his mouth and picks out chords he has given names to: Petronilla, Ajany, Odidi, Theo, Agoro. Akai, Galgalu … He evokes a tune.

Petrus Keah approaches the room and stops to listen. Eyes shut, he leans against the wall. Then he straightens up and saunters in, newly shaven, shirt unbuttoned, chest exposed, a white-and-gray Somali
kikoi
wrapped around his waist, red socks and gleaming black shoes adorning his feet.

Nyipir sees Petrus. His music stops.

Petrus bays an old regimental marching song off-key:

Fungua safari / Sisi vijana … / Amri ya nani …

Start the march / We young soldiers … / Whose order are these …

Nyipir accompanies him, looking him up and down. A frown of distaste spreads across his face. The music stops again.

“Keah, red socks,
sooaly
?”

Petrus turns his heels, indicates the ensemble, gestures with a finger.

“Everything ‘Made in Italy,’
osiepna
.”

Nothing to add, Nyipir resumes their music.

“B-baba?” Ajany hears the music on her way to her father, and, like Petrus, halts to listen. Here it was. The soul of Odidi’s music. She tiptoes into the room. And falters. There. No lines, no contours, intensity of pale-orange light from the window shines upon dust fragments floating inside the space. Her father, Petrus, glimpses of backlit, blue-shadowed otherness, as if time had loosened its hold on the both of them. She gasps.

“Nyara.”
Nyipir turns. He slips the mouth organ into the rucksack. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Ajany sees the travel packs on the floor. “You’re leaving.”

“Mandalay, 21° 59′ N 96° 6′ E, Rangoon, 16° 47′ N 96° 9′ E.”

“B-burma.”

He nods.

Her eyes widen in Petrus’s direction. “With
him
?”

Petrus purses his lips.

An awful stutter garbles Ajany’s words so tears show up in Nyipir’s eyes. She chokes out, “B-but when will you come back?”

When she was little, she would ask him this, and when she did, he promised to be home before the moon began to smile.

Nyipir reaches for both his daughter’s hands. “Today … today I don’t know.”